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Comment by Mirioron | Hacker News Reader

Why would that cause instant censoring? It could go the other way too. Content doesn't get censored. No more games by websites like Twitter where they "accidentally" censor one political side over and over. (Or vice versa elsewhere.) The idea is that if these websites get special protections that regular people don't, and are big enough to essentially be the town square, then the values the society itself accepts are what should guide it. In this case that would be free speech.

Just to be clear, I'm not necessarily arguing for this. I'm just trying to explain how else this might work.

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Let’s say hacker news could be sued for me posting a comment threatening to kill you and refusing to remove it.

Because in many states (maybe all?) they can be.

Remember, websites are only given immunity if they fail to remove “sueable” content.

Will they (hacker news):

a. Prescreen all comments, like a publisher prescreens manuscripts, or

b. Just do away with user-submitted content, or

c. Let everyone say whatever they want in an orgy of freedom with no moderation whatsoever?

Privately owned media sites will never, ever be a public square just because people use them the same way my yard isn’t a public square because you can walk across it on the way to ring my doorbell so you can ask to put a campaign sign in my grass.

Is the President of the United States of America sharing a video calling for the death of his political opponents a “sue worthy” event? What if he gave a speech saying that? Or published a presidential decree calling for it?

Some people see bigots saying “whatever dude it was just a satire joke” for what it is: bullshit.

They would pick c. All the legislators have to do is set a minimum size and certain exceptions on what can be removed, eg above 100 million users and remove off-topic and spam. HN and 99% of websites would be unaffected, but Twitter, Facebook et al would have to be more hands off in moderation.

If you own a giant piece of land and the government wants to build a highway over a part of it, it's still possible for them to legally do it, even if you refused.

Then you’re saying that some speech is more free than others.

And they won’t pick c, at least not after the first round of lawsuits.

As far as highways go, I don’t follow the analogy. The government has to pay me for any land they take. Do you think that they’ll buy twitter just so conservative bigots can have somewhere to go and be bigoted?

if you're removing off-topic comments and spam, you're already moderating. see also: doxxing, child pornography, etc.

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